He European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has agreed to study the appeals of the nine sentenced to prison in the procés trial and has forwarded to the Government several questions about possible violations of rights in the Supreme Court ruling.
The answers will be presented in Strasbourg by the State Attorney’s Office, the legal arm of the Executive. According to the latest information that the partners of the acting Government and their usual parliamentary supporters have left in black and white, the Legal Profession will have to support several theses of the plaintiffs, thus promoting the estimation of the resources and the sentencing of Spain.
The Explanatory Memorandum of the law that last December eliminated the crime of sedition justified the reform of the Penal Code in arguments such as those presented before the ECHR by Oriol Junqueras and the other eight convicted.
In particular, that the crime of sedition that was applied to them had such imprecise profiles that those affected could not foresee how it would be applied. And that the penalties that he imposed until his elimination were “disproportionate.” This, in turn, had a “deterrent effect” on the exercise of fundamental rights. With elements like these, the Strasbourg Court has already handed down sentences in other cases.
Regarding the first point, the legal reform promoted by the Government regrets “the lack of clarity about the content and scope of the criminal type of sedition, a circumstance that operates against the mandate of certainty inherent to the principle of criminal legality.”